What's up with AACA

Meeting on November 7, 2010

2010-11-07T20:01:00.001-08:00

I. Ice breaker (warm-up)

II. Strike system contract

III. Updates on committee projects

IV. Brainstorm ideas for youth training (skills)

We started off the meeting with a short ice-breaker to get to know everyone in the group. Then, the strike system was introduced and everyone signed a contract adhering to the rules stated. Later, everyone split up into their committee groups.

Go Lucky Green:

-ink cartridge collection box

-gift wrapping at Borders

-chinese arts and crafts

Start Simple Eat Well:

-make and focus on desserts

trying to find instructors

-Harriet Tubman Community Center $15/hr

-budget is $1000

Social Event Group:

-holiday dessert tasting/party on December 17

-have a sample of desserts and drinks (homemade)

-cultural foods

-$7 per person

-raking leaves/shoveling snow (possible fund raising ideas)

2010-09-24T17:53:00.000-07:00

Edit: New revised application! Apply now!

Youth Council applications

2010-08-24T15:05:00.001-07:00

AACA Youth Council applications are out for the 2010-2011 school year! Apply now! If you have any questions, please contact Chealyn Tim at chealyn@aaca-boston.org or 617-426-9492 ext. 231

Update on What's Been Going On 2010

2010-07-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

Since the Career Expo, AACA have accomplished many things and have taken on various new projects. In March, AACA was able to hire 20 youth to work for the Census 2010 and gave a stipend of $320 to each youth. As a continuation of the Go Lucky Green project from last year, AACA have also attempted to market bamboo and jade plants through the Youth Council to a greater number of buyers.

One of our most endeavoring project in 2010 is the Start Simple Eat Well classes, in which AACA hires professional instructors to teach students how to make delicious and efficient meals. So far, the May 22nd class has been the most successful class. Part of the success may be contributed to the Gala. It gave us the chance to outreach and get the words out about our initiative. Looking ahead, AACA hopes to continue offering these cooking classes in the summer and the following months.

Lastly, we have also continued our annual SummerWorks program to train future community leaders.

Career Expo

2009-11-21T08:08:00.000-08:00

On Friday,November 20 at 5-7 pm we held our first Career Expo on the fourth floor of AACA. It was a successful event! We knew there were many events happening on the day such as the movie New Moon and another event in Boston Latin School, The Hypnotist Show and was not sure of the outcome of attendance to our event. To our surprise we had a total of 38 students from around the Boston area attended this evening event. Students from Revere, Malden, East Boston, and Boston came looking for volunteer and internship opporutnities! The feedback we received from the students were this is the first time they heard of such an event.

Before the event we spent over two months planning the event and reaching out to organizations and businesses. We contacted over 50 organizations and was able to secure six organizations. The organizations were Boston Cares, Best Buddies, The84.org, Zumix, Samaritans, and Urbano, and obviously AACA. This has been a great learning experience because the whole event was organized by the youth council members. Here are a few pictures taken as the youths set up for the event. More pictures will come. Look for upcoming activities, events, and programs brought to you by the youth council members. Happy Thanksgiving!

What is Up with AACA after a long hiatus?

2009-10-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

AACA Youth Council accomplished many things over the months of August to October. We started summer with Summer Youth Leadership and Career development from July 6-August 24, 2009. These were a series of workshops held every Wednesday. Workshops included Intro to basic finance and Wall Street 101, Resume workshop, College Transition workshop, Community Based Art for Social Change workshop, Healthy Eating workshop, Healthy and Safety workshop and also Workplace training. We were also very fortunate to have a few summer works students in our program this summer, and they had a few field trips like the Red Sox game, and Boston Harbor field trip. Summer Works students also collaborated and attended APA History and Issue 101, Community Struggle, and Identities workshops. Also finance class was held, this class was taught by Jonathan Chan, one of our volunteers. We continued our “Go Lucky Green” project by being part of the August Moon Festival in Chinatown. We held a watermelon contest during the August Moon Festival.
In September we held a youth council meeting, with youth present to decide what is next for us. We also have a column in the Sampan Newspaper, youth would write about topics to be in the community youth voice. Some youth also went apple picking September.
In October we also held another youth council meeting, to talk about the upcoming months and what will happen. We will be having an employment fair (E-fair) in November 20 from 5pm-7pm. Also “Beyond High School”, this is for students to learn and develop skills, and also to see connections between school, work and their future adult life. A schedule will soon be out. During our next youth council meeting we will discuss more about the upcoming 2009-2010 United Way Youth Venture project, which we were a part of last year with our “Go Lucky Green”.

Friday Meeting 6/19/2009

2009-06-20T07:21:00.000-07:00

In Friday's meeting, we worked on our report for our Go Lucky Green Project. We evaluated what we've accomplished in our project as well as the obstacles we faced. Through our project, we learned how a business develops and function. At the end, we concluded that the project turned out differently than what we thought it would be.We think that if we continue with this project next year, we would stick with the "green" concept and try a different approach instead. We might sell a different product rather than bamboos, because we didn't really make a profit from selling bamboos. However, it was a great learning experiences for us. We've also concluded that we would be more successful if we had a bigger budget, and was given more time to work on it.

Wednesday 5/27/09

2009-05-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

Hey all! So this Wednesday we met up at AACA, and set out for another adventurous afternoon in Chinatown. We didn't really pass out that many forms, since we went through most of the stores last week. This week it was more of collecting the forms, and wondering if the buisnesses who did not reply were still interested in the plants. There were still some stores who said that their boss/managers were not there, and they did not give us a response. We also decided on the time for meeting up, and we somewhat planned out things, like the things that we are going to buy this Saturday. This was an interesting day, walking back to Chinatown, and getting the buisnesses response, because some people just totally forgot, or they just put the form aside.

AACA youth's adventure in Chinatown on May 20th 2009

2009-05-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

On May 2oth most of the AACA's youth (Amy, Betty, Bradford, Christine, Mabel, Vivian) met up at AACA. We printed out the applications for the local Chinatown businesses to sign up to get the free plants. Then we headed out into Chinatown. We went into the old businesses whom we already gave the application to and we went to the new businesses that we haven't contacted. In the beginning it was hard because we didn't realize that using English wasn't the best way. Afterwards we decided to use Chinese to communicate. That was an effective method because we got some businesses to sign up and some said maybe. We have made a list of all the businesses that we contacted and wrote down what their responses were. Although there were some businesses that told us "No" we didn't give up. We continued to ask and we will go back to the businesses in a few days to ask if they have filled out their applications yet. We all believe that in the end we will get enough businesses to take care of the plants. Keep up the good work guys!

AACA Youth Council At the end of the Day

2009-05-09T17:37:00.000-07:00

THINGS THAT WE COMPLETED TODAY:

Made the fliers
Made a form for the businesses to Sign if they are interested in receiving the Plants
Went around businesses to tell them about the youth council/Go Lucky Green Project, we did that by giving them a flier attached with it was a form to sign up for it.

We taped fliers of the Go Lucky Green Project around Chinatown.I felt that today we got alot of things done and we somewhat changed the ideas that we first thought up. In the begining we thought of placing the flowers in front of businesses, but as we got asround we found out that there were no room because the places there are really crwoded and there was not enough room for it.
Then when we were done with the flyer and form we went around Chinatown to hand out the flyers to Businesses, at the first some owners/managers were hesitant, or workers said the owner/manger was not here. We got one bakery to fill out the form and give it right back to us, and some said they would mail/bring it back to AACA.
Then the goup headed to Home Depot to figure out what plants there are and what the prices of it are. Now we actually have an idea of things to get on May 30.

May 9 Meeting

2009-05-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

Our first blog!

The AACA youth council is a council situated in Chinatown with youth who come from various places in the Greater Boston area. Currently, the youth is starting a project called the Go Lucky Green Project, in which we sell bamboos and use the profit we get to buy plants/flowers/trees to plant in Chinatown to make it more "green" (or environmentally friendly). After receiving a $1000 grant from United Way to start our project, we have been very successful. We made a $300 from selling the bamboos at various locations.

Today, we had a meeting where we researched the costs of plants for our Go Lucky Green Project. We were finally able to walk around Chinatown and take pictures of possible places where we could plant the flowers. We're still trying to create a flyer which we would distribute to different owners in Chinatown. Today was a fairly productive meeting.